“Literally everybody knows you’re lying. It’s convincing zero people and still you do it,” one X user says in response to Rep. Min.
Mere days after the assassination of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk, as thousands around the world are mourning, Congressman Dave Min (D-Irvine) posted a bold tweet claiming Charlie Kirk’s assassin was “MAGA” and part of the “radical right,” an assertion that is—based on all available evidence—patently untrue.
“Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA, I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT,” wrote the Congressman.
Tyler James Robinson, the 22-year-old charged in the shooting, is not a Republican, not registered with any party, and not affiliated with Trump’s movement in any way. Utah voter records list him as no party preference (NPP) and as an “inactive” voter. These facts alone knock down the central premise of Min’s post.
Robinson does, however, come from a conservative family. His father, Matt Robinson, is a registered Republican—as is his wife. Neighbors describe the family as solid GOP voters—the kind you’d expect in that part of Utah—but Tyler was the exception. The Guardian spoke with a high school friend who said Robinson was “pretty left on everything” and “the only member of his family that was really leftist.”
“Around sophomore year, the friend said, Robinson became more extreme in his political views and would ‘always just be ranting and arguing about them,’” writes Anna Bates, who conducted the interview. Bates mentions that the friend acknowledged that “the rest of his family was very hard Republican.”
“I knew he [Robinson] had strong political views, but I never thought it would even go near that far,” the friend said.
Whether or not that description captures the full picture, it’s consistent with what investigators have learned since the shooting. Yesterday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Utah Governor Spencer Cox cited interviews conducted by investigators with Robinson’s inner circle which revealed that he had a “leftist ideology” and that he had become “radicalized.”
A court affidavit written by a law enforcement officer assigned to the case quotes a family member who alleged Robinson had grown “more political in recent years.” At a family dinner, Robinson mentioned Kirk’s upcoming appearance at Utah Valley University and spoke at length to this family member that he didn’t like Kirk or what he stood for.
This is further evidenced by the engraving on one of Robinson’s bullet casings. An unfired cartridge reads “hey fascist! CATCH!” followed by a series of directional arrows—a reference to the game Helldivers 2, wherein players can enter this sequence of button-presses to drop an “Eagle 500kg Bomb” on a chosen target. One wonders how Rep. Min squares his assertion that Robinson was a card-carrying MAGA culture warrior with the simple fact that he believed Kirk—a longtime ally of President Donald Trump—was a fascist that needed to be killed.
Furthermore, Robinson has been in a romantic relationship with a transgender roommate—a male identifying as a female. Though this does not automatically make someone a leftist, it would put Robinson squarely at odds with the positions of Kirk, Trump, and the Republican Party platform—all of which argued in support of an executive order for the United States government to recognize the “biological reality of sex” as only an “individual’s immutable biological classification,” which is either male or female.
Min’s claim simply doesn’t fit with the evidence. If anything, Robinson appears to have broken from his conservative upbringing and gravitated left. There is enough substantial evidence for this that the FBI is now investigating leftist groups in Utah for connections to Kirk’s murderer. This is an evolving story, and new information could be inbound imminently.
Why, then, does Min feel emboldened to spread this faulty narrative on social media? One explanation is that he bought into bad information. In the hours after the shooting, social media lit up with false claims that Robinson had donated to Trump’s campaign. That “evidence” didn’t survive even a day of scrutiny; it turned out to be a different Tyler Robinson in a different zip code. But the rumor traveled fast, and it fit a ready-made narrative. Min may have seen it, believed it, and tweeted without fact-checking.
That’s not an excuse, however, for a Congressman to spread lies.
“Literally everybody knows you’re lying. It’s convincing zero people and still you do it,” one X user says in response to Min.
“All you people have is lies,” says another.
Indeed, social media is now abuzz with criticism for Min’s irresponsible post. The Congressman is also being “ratioed” on Twitter/X—a term that refers to when a post attracts far more critical replies than supportive likes, which itself signals widespread disapproval. At the time of writing, Min’s statement has only 285 likes, while multiple replies condemning him had thousands more: 5,000, 3,600, 2,600, 1,800, 1,600, and so on. It also has over 7,700 replies—almost all negative.
Multiple users have also included screenshots suggesting that Min is now blocking dissenters.
“Ghoulish,” one user puts simply.
“When I first saw this, I thought it was some Bluesky [expletive] and then discovered it’s actually a real tweet from a member of Congress… You people are the enemy, and we’re coming after you with every single institutional and legal tool we have at our disposal,” says yet another.
A common sentiment across Min’s replies is the notion that mislabeling a killer as MAGA, when the evidence points in the other direction, only deepens the divisions that lead to this kind of violence in the first place.
We contacted Min’s office to ask where he got his information. Was he relying on the false donation records? On Robinson’s family background? On something else entirely? Why hasn’t Min retracted the statement—similar to his recently-deleted homophobic tweet?
His office stated that because the post was made on the Congressman’s personal account, they do not have additional comments and had not spoken to Min about the issue.
Evidently that immunizes them from fallout when their boss lies to the American people. And it is indeed a lie. Tyler Robinson is not “MAGA.” He is not a Republican. There’s no evidence he was part of the “radical right.” On the contrary, what evidence exists points toward a young man who rejected his family’s conservative leanings, voiced vitriolic contempt for Charlie Kirk, and left behind abundant physical and digital clues that confirm it.
And whether it came from Min’s personal account or his Congressional account is irrelevant. A lie is still a lie.
